> On Sat, 2006-07-08 at 01:50 +0200, Andi Kleen wrote:> > Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> writes:> > > > > > Q: What about the OSS emulation in ALSA?> > > A: The OSS emulation in ALSA is not affected by my patches> > > (and it's not in any way scheduled for removal).> > > > I again object to removing the old ICH sound driver.> > It does the same as the Alsa driver in much less code and is ideal> > for generic monolithic kernels> > It doesn't do the same thing - software mixing is impossible with OSS.

Only GPL'ed version has this limitation - its just not implemented because all thisGPL'ed OSS is abandoned.The commercial version from www.opensound.com does input/output mixingin software in kernel space.It is free for home/personal use and only one thing you must do is to updateit regularly - once every 4 months. It works out of the box with 2.6.xx kernels and you don'tneed additional sound daemons or hidden library threads (ALSA approach).It has included scripts for module compilation in case of kernel changeand you can also have automatic updates and mixer settings restore without needfor instaling additional software packages.It has also text and graphical configuration tools and mixers.So users have still a choise and they will chose a product which best fits they needs.

From my point of view ALSA has many advantages if you want to dig in the card driverbuffers/period etc. settings but lacks ease of use and some of simple in theoryfunctionality is a pain - device enumeration or switching output mode/devicewithout restarting apps or rewritting them so they have special function for that purpose.

esd, arts, jackd, polypd and other prove that ALSA is not enoughand its functionality is far from perfect.

We have more and more audio devices - USB and Bluetooth ones - andwe need switch ouput from one to other device without changes in apps.

So better is to have some virtual sound device, then some mixing/effects/pluginsmodules and then true sound device or network stream. Normal app just doesn'tneed to now mutch about sound device. It just sets basic audio parametersand plays. Is ALSA going in that direction?

ALSA api is too complicated - too many possibilities to obtain the same effect -and additionaly there is no good docs how to use this api properly.Some methods don't work in some situactions - callback method for example uses signalsand in case of apps which turns some signals off there will be no sound at all.

Developers of ALSA say that they have no time to write docs. True - but including in kernelsome functionality for which users have no good docs is not good for anybody.We have many programs which use ALSA and don't work properly.Forcing users to use ALSA is some kind of misunderstanding in this situaction.

We have also almost no docs about ALSA drvier <-> ALSA lib interface which is a strangein case of GPL'ed software if we want to implement a new hw driver.

So is ALSA really what the users need? The future is unknown.

Regards-- Adam Tlałka mailto:atlka@pg.gda.pl ^v^ ^v^ ^v^Computer Center, Gdańsk University of Technology, PolandPGP public key: finger atlka@sunrise.pg.gda.pl-To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" inthe body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.orgMore majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.htmlPlease read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/